


Beat All

by jedusaur



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Drums, Gen, Girl Band, not needing no man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-15 00:05:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2208105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedusaur/pseuds/jedusaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I didn’t realize you played the drums, Erica.”</p><p>Erica looks down at her hands. There are red marks on them where she was squeezing the sticks, and she can’t feel any wetness in her eyes at all.</p><p>“I guess I do,” she says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beat All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anatsuno](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anatsuno/gifts).



> Happy belated birthday, anat!

There’s somebody creeping around the back of the bus. Two somebodies, Erica determines when she presses her forehead against the window to get a better look. This happens more often at these smaller venues--there’s usually better security at the stadiums. She’s about to call Jack over to deal with it when one of the fans steps away from the bus and she gets a good look at his face.

She stops.

The other one casually wanders over to Jack and strikes up a conversation. After a minute, Jack produces a lighter. Erica silently watches them move around to the front of the bus, away from the wind. Almost as soon as they’re out of sight, there’s a knock on the door.

The bus rocks a little as someone goes to open it. Allison, probably, because Lydia is holed up in her bunk reading something incomprehensible. The door creaks open, and Erica can hear Allison sigh in the split second of silence before the babbling starts.

“Allison! Hi, okay, so you probably don’t remember, but we went to high school together. I’ve been a fan of you guys since the beginning, I went to all your free gigs early on. I’ve always loved your stuff, like, I _really_ get it, and it gets me, you know? So I--”

“Hang on a sec,” says Allison, and the door closes. “Hey, anybody want a groupie?” she calls to the back of the bus. “He’s cute. Kinda looks like Bambi.”

Lydia snorts from her bunk. “I’m really more of a Simba kind of girl."

Erica quietly gets up and comes to the front of the bus. Allison is just opening the door again. He’s still standing there, shivering, wearing one of the crappy screen-printed T-shirts they used to sell before they had a real logo.

His eyes widen as she steps up next to Allison. “Erica.”

“Hi, Stiles,” she says.

***

“Jesus Christ, are you crying _again?_ ”

Erica wipes her eyes, turning away from the light. “If you want me to stop, making me feel bad about it isn’t going to help.”

Zoe sighs. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I just don’t get it. Why don’t you go do something that makes you happy instead of moping around in the bathroom?”

There isn’t anything that makes Erica happy. Nothing she can have, anyway. “Please leave me alone.”

“Nope.” Zoe grabs her wrist. “C’mon, let’s go fuck around with Dad’s drum set. I dare you to mope while you’re hitting shit with sticks.”

Erica’s pretty sure that trying to do something she doesn’t know how to do won’t make her feel any better about herself. Then again, it probably won’t be much worse than sitting by herself on the freezing-cold rim of a bathtub. Maybe she can accidentally hit Zoe with a stick.

“What are you so upset about?” Zoe asks while she’s dragging Erica down to the basement.

“A boy,” says Erica reluctantly. “He doesn’t--”

“Say no more,” Zoe interrupts. “Scumbags, all of ‘em. Just pretend you’re hitting him in the face. Here, watch me for a sec and then you can try.”

She sits down and bashes out a few different beats, showing off. After a minute, she stops and maneuvers Erica onto the stool, showing her how to hold the sticks with her arms crossed. Tentatively, Erica tries to imitate one of the patterns.

“Nice job,” Zoe says approvingly. “Now put your foot on the bass pedal and tap it every--wow, hey, you got it. I think it took me like twenty minutes of practicing before I could do that.”

It’s not hard at all. The rhythm just makes sense. Erica lets the sticks come down a little harder, puts more of her body into it. She tries another pattern, the only other one she remembers from Zoe’s little medley, and nails it almost immediately. She can hear Zoe clapping, and she hits even harder, trying to drown out the sound.

“ENOUGH!”

Startled, Erica drops the sticks. Aunt Rosa is standing at the top of the stairs, hands on her hips. “I swear, one of these days I’m going to put that thing up on Craigslist. Come upstairs, girls, dinner’s almost ready.”

Erica hurries to obey. As she’s washing her hands at the kitchen sink, Aunt Rosa says, “I didn’t realize you played the drums, Erica.”

Erica looks down at her hands. There are red marks on them where she was squeezing the sticks, and she can’t feel any wetness in her eyes at all.

“I guess I do,” she says.

***

She goes to the music store downtown and plays one of their drum sets until they ask her to stop, and then she apologetically buys a pair of sticks and proceeds to use them on absolutely everything. Tapping on furniture doesn’t quite match the feeling of sitting on a stool surrounded by options, but it helps her practice all the new beats she’s learning from the internet. When her family is asleep and she can’t make noise, she puts on headphones and watches YouTube videos of Chad Smith, Keith Moon, Sheila E., Dave Grohl. She barely touches her homework. 

On Erica’s birthday, a pickup truck with Uncle Max’s drum set in the back pulls into the driveway.

“No,” Mama says. “Ohhhh no, Rosa, don't you dare.” She stomps out of the house. Erica follows her out to the porch, staring speechless at the drums.

Aunt Rosa hops out of the cab. “Come help me, honey,” she calls to Erica, and begins unloading the drum set, blithely ignoring Mama’s protests.

Erica dashes down the path and reverently picks up the snare, which after hours on the internet she can identify instantly. “Does Uncle Max know about this?” she asks.

“Oh, he won’t even notice. He hasn’t touched it in years.” Rosa lugs the cymbals up the driveway and sets them down in the garage.

Erica trots after her with the snare. “I don’t want him to be angry,” she says nervously, although she can barely bring herself to let go of the drum to go back for another armful.

Rosa scoffs. “If he gives you any trouble, you send him straight to me,” she tells Erica.

Mama is threatening dire retribution in the background, but the metal edge of the drum is hard against Erica’s fingers, and she can barely hear a thing.

***

Erica’s been practicing beats on convenient surfaces so much lately that she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it on her desk until the new girl smiles at her and says, “Nice rhythm. I’m Allison, I play bass. Want to jam sometime?”

Erica isn’t entirely sure what jamming entails, but she nods anyway. If it involves drumming and people actually wanting to spend time with her, she’s in. “My drums are in my garage,” she says. “You could come over?”

The kid sitting in front of her turns around and says, “Yeah, get it out of your system someplace else, would you?”

Erica starts to stutter an apology, but Allison interrupts. “We’re not gonna get it out of her system,” she tells him coolly. “We’re gonna get it even more in. So you might want to pick a different seat.”

The kid rolls his eyes at her. Allison smirks and starts digging around in her bag. “Crap,” she mutters. “Did I seriously forget to bring a pen on the first--”

Erica offers her pencil box. The guy sitting on Allison’s other side looks disappointed.

***

On Wednesday afternoon, Allison shows up in Erica’s garage with Lydia Martin. They’re both carrying guitar cases. Allison introduces them like she doesn’t realize Lydia has ruled their grade since kindergarten. Maybe she doesn’t.

“Hi,” says Erica, and immediately wonders if she said it wrong.

Lydia sniffs. “Is there mold in here?” She glances around the musty garage, hiking her bag higher up her shoulder. “This is genuine, I don’t want it near anything that produces spores.”

They go inside to the kitchen, which apparently passes the mold inspection. While they’re in there, Erica grabs a box of crackers and a few bottles of water and soda, in case they actually stay a while. She’s not optimistic. This is already by far the longest Lydia has ever acknowledged her existence.

Back in the garage, Lydia opens her guitar case and says, “We should cover Taylor Swift.” Nobody argues.

She plays guitar and sings, and she’s really good. Erica didn’t know she could do either of those things, let alone both at once, but it’s not surprising that she does them well. Mostly, Erica’s just trying to wrap her mind around the idea that Lydia is here, at her house, voluntarily. Would this have happened ten years ago if she’d started playing the drums then?

They play for an hour or so, pausing every once in a while for Lydia and Allison to talk about boys and nail polish and occasionally time signatures. Erica stays quiet, trying not to be annoying. Staying quiet hasn’t ever stopped Lydia getting annoyed with her before, but she seems a little friendlier here than she does at school.

As they’re leaving, Allison and Lydia decide to come back next Wednesday. Erica holds her breath and hopes to god she won’t fuck this up.

That night, as she’s falling asleep, she realizes she hasn’t thought about Stiles all day.

***

Allison gets them a gig at a coffeehouse. They get one free drink each, and they’re allowed to put out a tip jar. A lady pays for her coffee with cash while they’re setting up and dumps the change into the jar before they’ve even played anything, which doesn’t really count. No one else gives them money, but most of them don’t get up and leave, which is really all Erica was hoping for.

They play five Taylor Swift songs and then finish up with “I Will Survive,” because Lydia says all modern breakup pop owes a debt to Gloria Gaynor. Erica doesn’t really know what that means, but she thinks Lydia’s voice sounds a lot better on that song than it does when she’s trying to sound like Taylor Swift.

After they’re done, a couple of guys who look like they’re in college come up to them. “You sound amazing,” one of them says to Lydia. “You should be singing, like, as a career. Fuck school or whatever.”

“Yeah, totally,” says Lydia, who said yesterday at practice that she wants to apply to MIT and CalTech.

Erica doesn’t notice how close the other guy is until he touches her arm. She jumps a little. “Uh, hi,” she says, trying to lean away without looking like that’s what she’s doing.

“Hey,” he says, and leans along with her. He doesn’t seem interested in actually saying anything, just feeling up her bicep.

Allison finishes zipping up her case and looks up. “Hey, back off,” she says loudly, and before Erica really knows what’s going on, she’s right there pushing him away.

“Jeez, what the hell’s her problem?” says the other guy, and they both back away.

Erica gets her kit out to Allison’s car as fast as she can. She rides home in the back, clutching the tip jar, which contains sixty-five cents.

Lydia sits in the front seat. Halfway back to Erica’s house, she says thoughtfully, “We should cover Pink.”

***

They play Taylor Swift and Pink at the farmers’ market. A few kids Erica recognizes from school stop to listen during “So What.” When the song is over, one of them says, “Wow, Lydia, I didn’t know you were in a band.”

“I’m not publicizing it yet,” says Lydia.

Erica’s not sure how playing in public isn’t publicizing, but she doesn’t say anything. She usually doesn’t say anything, because saying things increases the odds that she’ll say the wrong thing and Lydia will leave. If Lydia leaves, Allison will leave with her, and then Erica will be alone again.

She didn’t realize how much she hated being alone until she wasn’t. Now there’s nothing more important to her than Wednesday afternoons.

They finish up with “I Will Survive” again. While they’re packing up, Lydia says, “We should cover Ani DiFranco.”

Erica nods. She checks the tip jar. There’s more than twenty dollars in it.

“Who’s Ani DiFranco?” she asks.

***

They start practicing three times a week instead of once. Erica half-asses her homework, and she eats, and she sleeps, and she plays the drums. She watches YouTube videos, and she taps on the dinner table, and she plays the drums. She goes to school, and she comes home, and she plays the drums. She plays in the morning, and she plays at night, and when she’s not playing there’s always a steady rhythm echoing in her mind and her fingers.

Mama gives Zoe a Marilyn Manson album for her birthday and writes “Turn it up!” on the card.

***

Erica’s in the garage by herself before practice, working on a fancy stick-spinning move, when she realizes Lydia is standing in the doorway twenty minutes early. She stops right away, but Lydia shakes her head and says, “Do it again.”

Erica doesn’t want to. This is showy stuff, the kind of thing she does when she’s fooling around pretending to be a famous rock star. She wouldn’t do this during a real show. It feels silly to do it with anyone watching. But she does the move again, because Lydia said so.

“Can you do it in the middle of a solo?” asks Lydia.

“Sometimes, if I don’t drop it. I usually drop it.” She gives it a shot, heart pounding, and lands it perfectly.

“You should do that onstage,” Lydia decrees.

They haven’t even played on an actual stage yet, but Lydia’s not interested in details like that. “I usually drop it, though,” Erica repeats.

“So practice.” Lydia takes out her guitar and starts playing something unfamiliar.

Erica is sitting on the couch dutifully practicing her stick-spinning when Allison shows up a few minutes later and claps enthusiastically. Erica tosses the sticks away, embarrassed, and starts flipping through Lydia’s folder of sheet music. It’s organized neatly by artist, but in the back there are a few sheets of handwritten lyrics with no artist label.

“What are these?” she asks.

Lydia wouldn’t be Lydia if she ever let anyone catch her off-guard, but Erica sees a flash of uncertainty in her eyes before she shakes her hair back and says, “I’ve been working on a few things. We should try them out.”

***

They play at the coffeehouse again, all Lydia’s music this time, and a scary-looking woman in steel-toed boots comes up after their set to ask if they’d like to play a club gig for a hundred dollars.

Then Erica finds out what exactly Lydia Martin means when she uses the word “publicize.”

It’s supposed to be an 18+ event, but the place is packed with Beacon Hills High students who are definitely younger than that. There are adults there, too; Erica’s pretty sure that knot of people in brightly-colored dresses are drag queens. It’s hard to see much with all the dramatic lighting, but it looks like there are a _lot_ of people.

She takes a deep breath and counts them in.

Once they’re playing, it feels like something settles down inside her. It’s not like jamming in her garage, not remotely--but Allison keeps shooting her those little grins she always gets when a song is working really well in practice, and it feels almost the same.

A crowd of people storm them after the show asking where they can buy CDs. Lydia directs them all to a website Erica didn’t know existed. Apparently they have a mailing list where people can sign up to receive information about future events and releases. Good to know.

Stiles is there. He doesn’t approach them, but Erica sees him lurking in a corner. He waves in her direction, and her gut twists up a little... but now that she’s heard a real crowd applauding her band, it actually doesn’t seem like that big a deal.

***

“You just stick it in, hit Burn, and it’ll let you know when it’s finished.” Lydia sets a tall stack of CDs next to the computer. “Have fun. I’ll be back after I’m done at the bank.”

The process mostly consists of waiting. Erica almost wishes she had homework with her, or at least her drumsticks, although Lydia probably wouldn’t be happy to see dents in whatever fancy wood her desk is made of. Eventually, bored out of her skull, she starts braiding her hair into minuscule ropes.

She’s made her way through two-thirds of the stack of discs and most of the hair she can easily reach when Lydia comes back with Allison in tow. “Ooh, I love it!” says Allison, and immediately sits down behind Erica to start in on the back.

Lydia picks up her guitar. “This is the new one I was telling you about,” she says, and starts to play. The song is about moving to a new city to escape old ghosts. It’s good, like everything Lydia writes. Like everything she does.

“I want the drums to go like this,” Lydia says, and starts tapping out a beat on her guitar while she sings the chorus again. “And then during--”

“No,” says Erica.

Lydia pauses. “What?”

Erica turns around, accidentally yanking the braid Allison’s working on out of her hands. “I don’t want to do the same eighth-note variations for every song we play. Let’s talk about this at practice on Monday when I can use my kit to show you, okay? I have some ideas.”

Allison looks like someone just hit her with a truck and she’s kind of happy about it. Lydia doesn’t visibly react. She just says, “Okay. Monday.”

***

Allison refreshes her e-mail for the bazillionth time and freezes. She scrolls down, then slowly looks up at them. “Holy shit. They sent it. This is happening.”

“Nobody even think about signing that until I run it past my lawyer,” says Lydia, calm as ever.

Erica just smiles, and smiles, and keeps right on smiling all the way through the end of senior year and the beginning of their first tour.

***

“So tell me, how did the band get together in the first place?”

“Lydia,” Erica starts to say, toying nervously with one of her braids, but Allison interrupts her.

“It was all Erica, right from the beginning. She was drumming her heart out on her desk at school. I was the new kid and I didn’t know anybody, but I could tell she knew her shit, so I told her I played bass and she invited me over. We were actually a cover band until Erica found out Lydia had been secretly writing music and made her share with the class. And then Erica always hosted practice, and made sure we were all fed and hydrated, and spent hours copying our first EP so we could sell our stuff. I mean, Lydia’s an amazing artist and she deserves all the attention she gets for that, but behind the scenes this girl right here is the one who keeps us together. Lydia’s our face, but Erica’s our heart.”

Erica stares. None of that is true. Well, the details are, but they don’t actually mean anything. Lydia is the face _and_ the heart. They could replace Erica with any other semi-competent drummer in the world and the band wouldn’t be any different.

That’s what she’s always thought.

Lydia nods. “I’d say that’s true. And Allison’s our fists,” she adds, and they laugh.

***

“You remember me,” he breathes, eyes wide.

“Kind of a memorable name,” says Erica. “Nice shirt.”

He glances down, like he’s forgotten what he’s wearing. “Oh yeah, this is from like the first ever run of those. I was at all your shows in high school, I got all the merch. Your music really means a lot to me. I didn’t have a chance to tell you before you guys made it big. Um... I don’t know if you ever noticed, but we used to sit near each other in history. I, uh, I like what you did with your hair.”

Erica can feel Allison vibrating behind her. Allison knows now that this is the oblivious guy Erica was hung up on for most of high school, has known since Erica said his name, and Erica can tell she wants to step out and handle it.

She doesn’t have to.

Erica cocks her hip. Says, “It’s always great to hear from our fans. Enjoy the show.” Shuts the door.

“I have an idea for the encore,” says Lydia from her bunk.

Erica picks up a drumstick off the floor. “So get your ass out here and say it to our faces,” she calls back, and twirls and twirls and twirls the stick.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Beat All](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2304833) by [exmanhater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/pseuds/exmanhater)




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